I enjoy referencing words that amuse me. The champ at this pursuit I would list as Susie Dent who is a famous Lexicographer (maker of dictionaries) and Etymologist (word historian). Compared to her I am a chimp attempting to make my first tool to extract ants from a log. However I am not a chump, because I am curious enough to apply myself to the task of sharing myself with others through the wonders I find in the words of the English language. Intuitively, I believe that process is more important than the product, execution more interesting than outcome.
At this stage in our lives, my wife and I have decided it is time to prepare a will. A Last Will and Testament is pretty serious stuff, not to be left to the unvarnished. We’ve tried to start one of those on-line packages. I even have an old copy of a half-completed office supply brand of DIY ‘final notes to family and friends’. In review, these documents only served as reminders of failure to identify just what we want to leave behind. And who wants to feel left behind! So we engaged a lawyer to do the nasty work for us. Which meant we had to get used to some controversial language.
We needed to name someone to execute our will. That sounds pretty harsh. That person, so named, will be the executor (or, even more shocking, executrix). When I asked my eldest if he would be willing (I see a pun there) to serve this legal function, he said he’d be honoured but didn’t wish me to be executed just yet. Funny boy! I was beginning to realize why lawyers were needed at the end of one’s life, because you never know how all the assorted relatives are going to react to your demise. My former father-in-law (now there was a guy with an odd sense of humour) once gave out some bequeaths early because he didn’t want to imagine his progeny reaching their grasping hands into his coffin. “While I still have lungs to breathe.” He would announce. “I want you to have this to remember me by.” A reasonable sentiment.
That man was an executive engineer of some note, but cool to the touch. I wish to cultivate a broader notion of what my legacy might be, hopefully less focussed on the bottom line of a ledger sheet. My birth mom had written her own will by hand on a scrap of paper. I learned the value of shared accounts from being her executor and eldercare provider during her final years. By Mom’s death, we had divided up her meagre collections. It would be cruel to say there were moments when either my sister or I would have seriously served as her executioner, but there’s some truth to using that word, in that context.
What becomes apparent from the outcome of death is a review of the moments, lost or gained, that words fail to adequately describe. Which suggests that practising life, while we still have it, is preferable.
Catch My Drift? 